Friday, February 20, 2009

ER - Recap & Review - Beginning Of The End

ERBeginning of the End

Original Air Date: Feb 19, 2009

Jeff L - Sr Staff WriterJeffL@thetwocentscorp.com

It’s all about the heart in this Valentine’s week episode.

Dr. Morris and cop Claudia are romantic enjoying morning after. She wants some candy Valentine’s hearts, you know the kind with the cute little sayings printed on them, but Archie doesn’t know what she’s talking about, because he’s apparently lived in a cave his entire life.

3 comments:

Dr. Morris and cop Claudia are romantic enjoying morning after. She wants some candy Valentine’s hearts, you know the kind with the cute little sayings printed on them, but Archie doesn’t know what she’s talking about, because he’s apparently lived in a cave his entire life.

Dr. Rasgotra and Dr. Brenner are enjoying a romantic morning after of their own. Simon wants to take Neela on a vacation, but he won’t say where or when. Neela has to get to the hospital for surgery on her heart transplant patient.

Sam Taggert, who’s still on a break from Dr. Gates after he almost got her son Alex killed by letting him go to a party, finds out Alex had a girlfriend who broke his heart after their 2 day relationship.

Wallace Shawn (Princess Bride) guest stars as mushroom expert who’s has somehow managed to pick up extrinsic allergic alveolitis (mushroom worker’s lung). He’s brought to the E.R. with his entire wedding party who are all in character from their A Midsummer Night’s Dream themed wedding.

Dr. Banfield and her husband, who have been trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant, talk about adoption. Dr. Banfield worries that the couple wouldn’t love a child as much if it was not their own. She brings up the idea of implanting a fertilized egg donated by her niece. Dr. Banfield meets with her niece who agrees to donate the egg, even though her husband thought that might be weird.

Dr. John Carter returns to the E.R. and nobody recognizes him. Dr. Gates thinks he’s heard of him and asks if he’s the doctor who got a nurse pregnant and moved to Seattle, but that was Dr. Ross (George Clooney). Carter says no, that it was someone else. Dr. Carter finally connects with Dr. Banfield and asks if he can pick up a few shifts at the E.R. Banfield is hesitant at first, not because she checked the records and found out about when he was stabbed in the E.R. and subsequently got hooked on drugs and had to go rehab, but because he worked with Dr. Green (Anthony Edwards) she decides to give him the job.

The doctors work on pulling a tire iron out of a guy. They try to transplant a woman’s heart, but the donor heart isn’t a medical match so they have to stop and put the woman on a bypass machine. Dr. Morris treats a patient who Claudia’s partner roughed up in the police interrogation room.

Brenner sends Neela a map of Chicago with a little heart drawn on it and she follows it to the canals where Brenner is waiting with his promise to take her to VeniceDr. Carter walks around the city and visits the memorial for his baby.

At the end of the episode we see him hooked to a dialysis machine. It looks like the return of Dr. John Carter is the beginning of the end and that he’ll probably be dying in the season finale or an episode leading up to it. It’s forgivable if they use his illness as the impetus to bring back all the previous stars of the show to pay their respects in the final episodes.

I think you're dead on. When I watched this episode, seeing Carter on the machine at the end, it really made me think the finale could be his funeral - the only think strong enough to bring back all those people.

I agree with both of you... an event such as Carter's funeral would be perfect writing device to get all the old cast back. George... We're talking to YOU!

Are you sure it was a dialysis machine? I've never seen one, but I HAVE seen the chemo machines, and that's what I thought Carter was on... which is a bit cheeky, since that's how ER lost Mark. But either way, Carter is back. Yay!